


It's a New Dawn, It's a New Day, It's a New Life

by HauntedByDayDreams



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And the episodes since, Bi-Curious Dean Winchester, Castiel in the Bunker, Dean Winchester Teaches Castiel to be Human, Dean Winchester is Protective of Castiel, Destiel - Freeform, Dorks in Love, Drunk Castiel, Episode: s09e03 I'm No Angel, Episode: s09e04 Slumber Party, Falling In Love, Fluff, Human Castiel, M/M, Sam Ships It, So many seasons of buildup
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-13
Updated: 2016-07-14
Packaged: 2018-07-23 16:57:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7471776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HauntedByDayDreams/pseuds/HauntedByDayDreams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>I do now see how difficult life can be and how well you two have led it. And I think you'll be great teachers. </em>
</p><p>Set in an AU where Dean convinces the angel "Ezekiel" to allow Castiel to stay in the bunker. Castiel acclimates to life in the bunker and finds himself exploring his relationship with Dean in a new, human, context.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. "In Heaven, there is no beer. That's why we drink ours here." -Frankie Yankovic

"I do now see how difficult life can be and how well you two have led it. And I think you'll be great teachers."

***

Convincing Ezekiel hadn't been easy. The angel remained adamant that Castiel had to leave the bunker immediately; frankly, it had seemed suspicious to Dean that he should be so concerned over his presence without offering an explanation, but that was something he could mull over later. He begged the angel to let his friend stay, reminding him that the bunker was completely warded and Castiel himself was, too. Ezekiel had gradually been worn down, bit by bit; he finally relented when Dean pointed out that Castiel's exit would seem suspicious to Sam, who want to know why he would leave when he had nowhere to go.

"He really has nowhere else to go," Dean whispered pleadingly, his eyes flickering over to the library where the ex-angel in question now sat.

Ezekiel considered this for a moment, his expression unsure. "You cannot tell him that I am inside your brother," he finally said solemnly. "Swear to it."

"Okay, I swear," Dean said, grinning with relief: Cas could stay. When he'd joined Castiel in the library, watching him hungrily dig into burritos he'd improperly nuked in the microwave, he knew he had made the right decision. As he looked into those tired, trusting blue eyes, Dean knew that Castiel's spirits may not have survived another night in the street.

***

Dean was perched on the edge of the table in the war-room grinning down at Cas seated just in front of him in one of the chairs. Cas's hair was unruly, the skin beneath his eyes semicircles of shadow; he subconsciously scratched at his scruffy jaw, staring sullenly up at Dean. The hunter had woken up his friend this morning by blasting AC/DC's "Highway To Hell" from his phone's speakers beside his bed. Castiel had been less than thrilled to be startled awake in such a manner, cursing and flailing as his legs became twisted in the sheets.

"If I was still an angel I would smite you," he'd grumbled sourly, making Dean laugh.

"What are we doing?" Castiel asked now, propping his chin up in his palm and squinting up at Dean. "I could be sleeping." Dean's dark grey Led Zeppelin shirt hung on his frame loosely and his borrowed jeans were ridden with holes. Dean had assured Cas the day before that they would go out and buy him a new wardrobe someday soon, but for now Dean enjoyed the sight of his friend in his clothes with a sort of guilty satisfaction he would never admit to. 

"If you want to get back into this hunter's life you can't be sleeping until ten every morning," Dean said matter-of-factly.

"I didn't sleep at all until a few months ago. I think I'm entitled to a few late mornings," Cas deadpanned. Dean waved his words away, reaching for the paper sack sitting next to him on the table. He felt Castiel's eyes on him and he smirked as he pulled from the bag a green glass bottle, sliding two crystal liquor glasses from behind it.

"Are you a Jägermeister type of man? I always figured you would be."

"Morning drinking? The life of a hunter truly is a respectable one."

"It's five-o-clock somewhere, dick. Drink up." Dean poured about a shot's worth of the liquid into both glasses and proffered it to the prior angel; Cas accepted it with a frown. Dean eyed him inquisitively.

"I haven't drank since becoming human," Castiel explained.

"Exactly. No better time than the present. By the way, try to down this all at once. Strong taste."

Cas eyed his glass skeptically, bringing it to his nose and sniffing. Then he lifted it to his lips, tilting it back as Dean gulped down his own. Cas's eyes widened infinitesimally, spluttering with engorged cheeks as he slapped a hand to his mouth to try to keep the vile substance from spraying everywhere.

"Swallow, swallow!" Dean coaxed, dropping his glass to the table and hurriedly grabbing Cas's own. Cas managed to get it down, pulling a disgusted expression as he stared up at Dean.

"That was horrible."

"Maybe I had you pegged wrong, then," Dean said with a grin. "Jäger was originally used for cough syrup, if that tells you anything." He pulled the glasses back towards him and pulled another bottle from the bag. "Whiskey never fails."

Cas smacked his lips disdainfully at the lingering bitter taste on his tongue, though the warmth of the drink was pooling in his chest in a way that wasn't quite unpleasant. He snatched hastily for his glass as Dean refilled it with the amber liquor; Dean's eyes widened at how quickly Cas drank it, grimacing as the whiskey bit at his throat.

"Easy, easy," Dean said, then blinked as Cas shoved the glass back in his direction and demanded another. "I'm not so sure that would be smart-"

"Who are you to lecture me on the morals of drunkenness?" Cas asked with narrow eyes, his words already slurring together. Dean was taken aback by the jab at first but then he laughed, glad to see that Castiel's spark hadn't been diminished by life on the streets. He grabbed the bottle by the neck and took a swig.

"Alright, can't argue with that. Cheers!" he said as he handed Cas his newly refilled glass; they clinked them together and drained them in unison.

When Sam entered the room a few hours later, freshly showered and dressed for the day, he was surprised to see his brother and Cas seated by each other at the table, chattering amongst themselves with the thick and sloppy speech of drunken men. Cas's head was lolling against Dean's shoulder, his arms flying about as he animatedly tried to tell whatever story had suddenly occurred to him, his eyes glued to the ceiling, cheeks ruddy. Dean was smiling down at him, a raw, tender look in his eyes as he held his nearly empty liquor glass up and away from Cas's unpredictable arms.

"Having fun?" Sam spoke up, watching as Dean jerked upwards as thought he'd been caught raiding the cookie jar, heat flooding to his face. Cas looked between the two of them and seemed to sense tension; he chose that moment to loudly announce that he was going to get a shower. As he passed by the younger Winchester, he reached up to give him an affectionate pat on the face before stumbling away.

"Really, Dean?" Sam began as soon as he judged Cas was out of earshot. "Two days and you're already trying to corrupt the angel?"

"Hey, he's not an angel anymore, he's down on the ground with the rest of us. And don't you think we corrupted him years ago?" Dean took a swig from his glass and grinned. "God, he's a lightweight. That'll be fun."

Sam rolled his eyes, arms folded across his broad chest. "Just keep the flirting to a minimum until he gets used to life here, okay?"

Dean spluttered, roughly wiping his sleeve across his mouth. "Excuse me?" he said sharply, glaring up at his brother reproachfully.

Sam shrugged with reticent reserve. "You heard me." He jangled the keys in his hands as he walked towards the staircase, saying, "Running to get groceries with the Impala. I'll be back soon." He was gone before Dean had time to come to his senses and argue.

"Flirting, my ass," Dean grumbled as he settled back down into his chair. He ditched the glass entirely and grabbed for the bottle.


	2. "Man need not be degraded to a machine by being denied to be a ghost in a machine." -Gilbert Ryle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set in 9X04- Slumber Party. The encounter with Dorothy and the Wicked Witch isn't quite the same with Cas around; and Cas finds himself falling for Dean during small moments he doesn't fully understand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a bit different from the last, as it's set entirely during the episode. (It's also pretty late here so I'll probably go back and clean it up later.) Hope you enjoy!

"I think I found away to track down angels," Sam said, eyes focused on Castiel. Cas's mouth fell open as he looked quickly between the two Winchesters; Dean looked as surprised as he felt.

"How?"

"Kevin said the table lit up like a Christmas tree when the angels fell, right?" 

"So?" Dean asked gruffly.

"So it turns out each light was where a cluster of angels fell. So I'm thinking maybe there's some way to hot-wire this, make it track angels." Sam grinned and looked to Cas again, searching his expression for his reaction, obviously pleased with himself. "Would you like that?"

"That would be wonderful," Castiel nodded, leaning against the back of one of the chairs.

Dean looked troubled as he watched Sam intently. "And this was... your idea?" he asked finally, hesitantly. Sam squinted at him, gave an amused chuckle and pretended to look around the bunker.

"Do you see anybody else here?" he joked, and Dean forced a smile, trying to let the tense moment pass.

"Right, of course. So how would it work?" Dean redirected, and as Sam mumbled on about wires and gestured for them to follow him downstairs Castiel probed Dean's expression inquisitively. Something about him had seemed _off_ when Sam had brought up the angels. He seemed tense, almost nervous. Dean noticed him staring and offered a disarming smile that made Castiel quickly shift his eyes away.

Strange. Dean was hiding something from them.

***

"It's warm here," Dean said, touching the back of his hand to part of the large contraption that was a fifties-generation computer; in its prime it had stored away information about the biggest and baddest evils. Cas and Sam watched as he grabbed a screwdriver and began to jimmy open the panel; when it finally burst open he staggered backwards, jolting heavily into a metal shelf of miscellaneous objects. Unbeknownst to the three, Dean had accidentally toppled a jar holding two entangled souls, the product of a binding spell from many decades prior. The liquid inside bubbled and pulsated as the occupants of the jar struggled for release.

"Got it," Dean mumbled as Sam circled around to peer into the motley of wires and bolts and buttons. Sam made an annoyed sound in the back of his throat, dropping to his knees to get a closer look. "Well, that looks simple. Does it come with a manual?"

"Nothing in the archives, and I obviously couldn't find anything like it online, not to mention I'm pretty sure that the Men of Letters doesn't exactly have I.T. support anymore, either." Sam tweaked a few of the wires between his forefinger and thumb, brow cinching in puzzlement. Dean paused for a moment, then grinned.

"I think I know somebody who could help us," he said, and turned to look at Cas who had been staying out of the way behind them. "Cas, you're gonna love her."

As they filed out of the room, the grey substance continued to strain against its confines of the jar.

***

The heavy metallic clang of the bunker's door opening and closing caught the boys' attention all at once. 

"Here it is," Sam grinning, looking up towards the entrance as Charlie shuffled into view at the top of the staircase. Dean stood from his chair and swiftly moved to the base of the staircase to intercept her, smiling at her as she waved at him and scooping her up into a familial hug. Castiel hung back awkwardly, unsure of how to present himself. As an angel, formalities and salutations were not things he'd had to concern himself with. As a human, it seemed more important than perhaps it really was.

"Thanks for coming," Dean grinned as he and Charlie parted.

"Not a problem, especially since I got fired last week," she said a bit sheepishly, wrapping her fingers around the strap of her computer bag; Sam offered to take it from her and she relented, letting him set it on the table.

"Hey, what? What happened?" Sam asked concernedly. 

"Turns out the company I work for was outsourcing to child labor, so I took a big Wikileak all over that. And, yeah. It's cool, though. It's given me more time to focus on my hobbies... Like LARPing, macrame, and hunting." Charlie ran through her words quickly, as though trying to hide a bombshell among the meat of her sentence, but Dean and Sam were hanging on every word. Castiel noticed the way both of the Winchesters' faces morphed into alarm at the same moment.

"Excuse me?" Dean said, his tone that of a scolding older brother; he folded his arms and stared at her disapprovingly. She waved her hands in a sort of panic, beginning her string of excuses.

"Okay. It was just a couple little cases. I took down a teenage vampire and a ghost... which sounds like a Y.A. novel if you say it out loud." Before Sam or Dean could further comment, her eyes flitted over to where Castiel stood off to the side; her face broke into a broad smile and she rushed across the room to envelope him in a tight hug. Castiel was surprised, but he allowed her to hug him and even lightly returned the embrace.

"Charlie, Cas. Cas, Charlie," Dean said, amused; the introductions were clearly unnecessary.

Charlie broke away from Castiel, keeping her arms as his shoulders as she beamed up at him. Cas had the feeling she was studying him, trying to match his face with the stories she had most likely heard. It was odd to him that she seemed so happy to meet him after she had doubtlessly heard of the mistakes he had made, the betrayal he had wrought; unless perhaps Sam and Dean had glossed over those aspects of his history. "I thought you'd be shorter. And I heard you wore a trench-coat, though I can see you've been rifling through Dean's closet," she said finally before turning away, leaving the fallen angel to puzzle at her words. Sam shot him a knowing smile- Charlie had a knack for first impressions. "So, where is this Commodore 64 of yours?"

***

A few hours later, after much scolding about hunting alone and an excess of computer jargon, Charlie frowned down at her laptop, checking the download's progress.

"Ugh, these files are encrypted. This is gonna take a while." She looked up at the boys with a shrug. "So, takeout, sleepover, braid each others hair?" Sam glanced between her and Cas, a smile lighting up his eyes.

"Got an idea," he said.

An hour or so later found them all gathered in Sam's room, which had files and books galore stacked in every available spot, huddled around the old-style television set and watching _Game of Thrones_. Charlie and Dean sat on the bed, leaning against the headboard, a bag of popcorn passing constantly between them; Cas was laying across the end of the bed, one hand propping up his chin and the other ready to push away Dean's foot that occasionally found itself prodding playfully at his side; Sam was sitting in a chair by the bed. 

Dean fished for the remote and turned off the television as the episode ended.

"Wow. That Joffrey's a dick," he decided.

"Oh, you have no idea. Wait until he-"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! Spoilers. I haven't read all the books yet," Sam protested with a wave of his arms. Dean side-eyed his brother, his brow quirked.

"You're gonna read the books?"

"Yes, Dean. I like to read books- you know, the ones without pictures."

Dean huffed in annoyance.

"Man, this bed is about as comfortable as brick," Charlie commented to break the tense silence. "Hey, lets get some tunes pumping while the files finish up." Dean groaned, all too familiar with Charlie's taste in music, and Charlie stuck her tongue out at him. "Hey, Cas," she said suddenly, shooting him a glance. "What type of music do you like?"

"Oh, uh..." He fiddled with the sheets on the bed. "I don't know."

"You don't..." Charlie looked at Dean disbelievingly and he nodded back at her as if to confirm what she'd heard. "You don't know?"

"I've never really listened before I guess."

"How old are you?" Charlie cried incredulously. "You mean in millions of years of life you never have taken time to pop in at a Beatles concert or listen to Michael Jackson, or _anything_?" She rounded on Dean and Sam disapprovingly. "And neither of you thought to educate him?"

She leapt for phone on the nightstand and searched through her playlist for an appropriate song; Cas eyed Sam warily and received only a sympathetic shrug in response. The song Charlie chose had a light, happy beat, and of course it was one he had never heard before.

"Come on," she said happily, pulling him to his feet and swaying to and fro in front of him until he got the point and stiffly mirrored her movements. Her smile was infectious, and before long he was loosening up and mock-twirling her and dancing around with her. Dean watched from the bed, clapping his hands together and throwing his head back as he gave a throaty laugh; Sam went to grab them all beers and then just stood in the doorway, watching them with a small smile.

"You've gotta get more free with it!" Charlie cried, spinning around on her heels and pumping her fists in the air. Cas flushed red as he attempted to swivel his hips with his legs to the beat. "Okay, Mr. Elvis rubber-legs," Charlie laughed. Cas's eyes darted to Dean, who shot him Elvis's signature lip curl and nodded his chin at him, although Cas didn't understand.

"Okay, my turn." Dean snatched up Charlie's phone and silenced the offending music, finding a song he approved of as Cas collapsed on the side of the bed.

"I'm out of breath," he noted.

"Charlie'll do that to you," Sam grinned. Charlie tossed her head to her shoulder and smiled sweetly.

Dean looked up at them as the first riffs of his chosen songs began to sound from the speakers of the cell phone. "Metallica," he nodded to himself, rolling across the bed to land on the floor in front of Cas. He jumped to his feet, dipping his head quickly and heavily to the drums and guitar, pretending to pick at the strings of an invisible Les Paul. "Up! Up!" he demanded, slinging his make-believe guitar to the side to pull Cas to his feet by his arm. He leaned against him, mouthing the lyrics with all the vigor of an eighties rock singer, jabbing a shoulder against Cas and encouraging him to play along. Cas found himself infatuated with Dean's smile and carefree laughter that he dispensed so willingly in the moment; he thought he could live off the high Dean's happiness brought him.

As Cas got the hang of the air guitar, Charlie and Sam engaged each other in a battle to see who could pull off the invisible drum-set the best (it was Charlie). By the time Dean had pulled Cas up so that they were both standing on the bed, rocking out and bumping into each other and laughing and smiling, both Sam and Charlie were too busy to notice the lingering touches and giddy laughter of the two. If they had, Sam would have nudged Charlie with an elbow and gestured to them. Charlie would have watched them for a moment then turned to look back at Sam with a smug smile; sharing a look between themselves that only they understood. But Sam and Charlie didn't notice, and the moment passed, and only Dean and Castiel had the chance to revel in it.

The song ended, and Dean flopped backwards onto the bed, pulling Cas down roughly beside him, smiles still etched into everyone's mouths. Cas's eyes skimmed along Dean's shoulder's touching his own, up up up to the flushed face of the hunter, lingering there. Charlie glanced down at her watch, brushing her hair behind her ear.

"Sorry to cut this short, but the files should be done downloading by now."

***

Some sort of pulsating, grey growth on the walls. A woman falling out of it, claiming to be a hunter by the name of Dorothy. The same woman declaring their need to find and contain a wicked witch somewhere in the bunker. Through all of this, Cas only squinted quizzically from person to person, finally finding a moment to ask: 

"Who is this wizard, and where exactly is Oz? I've never heard of such a place."

Dorothy looked at Castiel in disbelief and Charlie shrugged commiseratingly.

"He's a bit behind on pop culture. Don't take it offensively."

***

"Don't let what Crowley said get you down, man," Dean said, clapping his gun-free hand across Castiel's shoulder consolingly as they approached the kitchen. "He's the one chained up like a dog in our dungeon."

"But what he said wasn't wrong." Cas looked at him despairingly. "I'm not an angel. I'm not a hunter. I'm not _anything_. I'm no use to you now, you or Sam. Maybe I... Maybe I shouldn't be here." He averted his eyes and Dean frowned, gingerly removing his arm.

"Our lives are a hell of a lot better for you being in it." Cas looked up in surprise at the intensity of his voice. "Hunters can be made, but what you are to us- that's special. We don't want you to go anywhere, except maybe down the road to pick up some pizzas later. Kapeesh?"

"Kapeesh," said Cas in a small voice, but the tension between his eyebrows had disappeared. He held back as Sam and Dean entered the kitchen with guns drawn, then followed in behind them at the all clear signal. The kitchen was a wreck; pots and dishes and cutlery had been strewn about and cabinet doors had been wrenched from their hinges. As Dean complained about the mess, muttering something about having just cleaned, Cas heard footsteps echoing from down the hall.

"Incoming," he warned quietly, and Sam and Dean turned their guns towards the door only to lower them as Dorothy and Charlie entered.

"Sorry. We raided your gun range. Made us some poppy bullets. They won't kill the witch, but they will stun the crap out of her. There was only enough for four bullets." Charlie distributed the bullets, first to Dean, then to Sam, then to Dorothy. She hesitated, last bullet held between her fingers, before offering it up to Castiel, trying to hide her disappointment behind a tight-lipped smile. Castiel's stare lingered on the bullet for a moment, then trailed up to the girl's face. He shook his head slightly, taking her small hand in his and curling her fingers around it.

"I'm not a very good shot anyway," he said. "You keep it." Charlie's face split into a grateful smile, pulling a gun from her hip holster and loading it.

Cas felt a hand on his shoulder; "Stay close to me," Dean whispered into his ear as Sam informed the girls on what they had learned from Crowley. Dean's breath tickled his neck.

***

Charlie and Cas were searching through Dean's desk while Dean searched through boxes on the floor. They were trying to find the key the witch sought so eagerly; a key that Dorothy said could turn any door into a portal for Oz, and subsequently allow the witch to destroy it.

"You keep your porn meticulously organized, but not-" Charlie began, only to be interjected by Dean.

"Don't judge me." He cast a strange look at Cas- almost embarrassment- then kept on at his task. With a whoop, he finally found the key, pulling it free from the box. "Yahtzee!" Cas and Charlie turned to look at him at his exclamation, and both saw the witch standing behind him at the same time. She was a storybook-esque witch, quite literally, with a black hood and scraggly white hair and wild eyes.

"Dean!" Charlie and Cas shouted at the same time.

The witch snatched the key from Dean's hand, then threw him against the wall; he toppled onto the desk, vision whirling from the impact. Cas rushed the witch as Charlie froze to the spot; the witch scoffed at him with her wordless mouth, wiry fingers wrapping around his throat and slamming him back against the wall. His eyes rolled up into his head as he slumped to the floor, unconscious.

The witch turned on Dean, who was beginning to stir, green shoots of electricity sparking at her fingertips. With a cry Charlie threw herself in front of Dean, taking the full brunt of the assault and dropping heavily to the floor in a heap. Dean gasped; after he temporarily dispatched the witch with a poppy seed bullet to the shoulder he dropped down to where her limp body lay, cradling her head between his hands and whimpering her name.

Cas stirred awake, pain searing across the back of his head and through his shoulder; he bit back a groan and blearily blinked as he caught sight of Dean kneeling beside Charlie across the room with teary eyes. The grave weight of the situation suddenly dawned on him, and it took everything in him not to scream at the cruel indignity of the situation. Charlie had the bullet, Charlie had a life. It should be him who was dead.

Cas heard Sam in the hallway, calling out for Dean, but to his surprise Dean suddenly cried out, "Zeke! I need you!" Sam appeared in the doorway, and his eyes flashed blue.

Cas's mouth dropped open in shock; then, realizing he most likely wasn't supposed to be witnessing the encounter, feigned unconsciousness. Zeke? Ezekiel? Ezekiel was _in_ Sam? So that's what Dean had been hiding from him. And from Sam.

Cas listened as Dean begged for the angel to heal Charlie; the angel seemed hesitant at first, but finally relented after much bickering. Cas groaned to show that he was awake after he was sure Sam was Sam again, and Dean finally left Charlie's side to come pull him up.

"Oh, damn, your shoulder is dislocated," Dean frowned, pushing on it slightly; Cas hissed and pulled away, gripping his elbow tightly to keep his arm from weighing on his injury. "Fine, fine. Sam, you come deal with this."

Sam walked over, and after a moment of looking at it and saying something about letting it heal with time he quickly pushed Cas against the wall and popped the joint back into place. Cas's eyes squeezed shut, a scream erupting from his mouth as he grasped for the shoulder.

"What the hell?"

"If I'd told you what I was going to do you wouldn't have wanted me to," Sam somewhat apologized.

"I trusted you."

***

"What do you mean, "get to a safe place"?" Cas asked, his expression one of unadulterated hurt. Dean cringed, and rubbed at the back of his neck.

"Cas, you're already injured, and... Until we get you ready for this type of situation without your angel mojo, maybe you should sit this one out."

Cas frowned, then folded his arms and sat down on the bed. He suddenly reminded Dean of a petulant child, but Dean understood why he was upset. He would probably react much worse to being benched if the roles were reversed, but he couldn't afford to care if he wanted Cas to survive this.

Charlie nudged at Cas's arm and offered a small smile. "I know that feel, bro."

***

Cas hadn't listened to Dean. Obviously.

He had trailed behind them quietly, waiting to see if he could be of any assistance. When the girls split up from the boys to scour the garage, he caught up with them. He was fairly certain neither of them would mind, or tell Dean at the least. "I would've done the same thing," Charlie admitted.

As Dorothy and Charlie chattered on about the land of Oz, Cas skimmed his fingers along the hoods of the various makes and models residing in the garage. The Impala would be well at home in here among all of these classics, he thought to himself.

When Sam and Dean appeared in the doorway, he immediately knew it wasn't really them. He'd spent too many long years with them not to recognize the signs of a possession when he saw one. He shouted a warning to Charlie and Dorothy, and then the Winchesters were on them. Cas wrestled Dean off of Charlie, allowing her to escape while he grappled with him. Dean spun around and landed a punch square on his jaw. The next caught his nose, and warm blood cascaded into his mouth. He heard Sam across the room fighting Dorothy, her skirmish sounding like it wasn't going much better than his own.

Just keep him occupied until Charlie kills the witch, he told himself, ducking away from another punch and slamming his shoulders hard against his chest. They both toppled to the floor, Cas landing awkwardly on top of Dean; the hunter grabbed him roughly by his shoulders, making Cas wince as he felt his injury throb with renewed pain, rolling over until Dean was straddling Castiel, landing punch after punch across his face. 

"Sorry," he muttered in his deep guttural tones before launching a sharp uppercut to Dean's jaw.

***

"Cas," Dean grunted, his green eyes clearing as the witch lost her power over him. He wrenched himself off of his friend, allowing Cas to peel himself off of the wall, breathing ragged. Cas wiped at his bloody nose with the back of his hand; one eye was blackened and his lower lip was split. "What did I tell you, man?"

"What the hell just happened?" called Sam from across the room, helping Dorothy up from the floor as she spit a gob of blood on the floor.

"Charlie," Dorothy smiled.

***

"Dean." Cas caught Dean's shoulder as he walked by, holding him back. "Wait for a moment."

Sam looked between of the two of them, then shook his head with a little smile and continued on up into the main part of the bunker.

"What is it, Cas?"

"Dean..." Now that he was looking Dean in his eyes, Cas fumbled for his words. He always found himself getting lost in those speckled green irises; when he was an angel, eyes had been the gateway to the soul, windows to a human's core. Now they seemed somehow even more beautiful and tantalizing. "Dean, you know you can trust me with anything? I know in the past I've..." He trailed off. In the past he'd broken that trust- maybe he shouldn't ask after all.

"Hey, the past is in the past. I'm not worried about it. But what's this about?" Dean put a hand on Cas's shoulder and Cas's breath caught at the intrusion of his personal space: oh, the irony.

What was this, this breathless feeling? Why was it brought on only by Dean?

"If there's anything going on, that you need someone to confide in about," Cas said cautiously, when he regained his ability to form coherent sentences, "I'm always here."

Dean hesitated, and for a moment something akin to exhaustion shone in his eyes. He looked like he wanted to say something, but knew that he couldn't. "If I was able to talk to you, I would, Cas. I really would." Dean's stare was electric and tinged with sadness and Cas couldn't look away; his heartbeat was erratic in his chest.

"As long as we're clear with each other," Cas said, cursing himself as his voice came out winded and raspy.

As Dean walked away, Cas realized he wanted to chase after him, and after that fleeting feeling that left his lungs devoid of oxygen and his heart bursting with heat.


End file.
